Persona
by KhamanV
Summary: (SPOILERS FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS, please do not read this if you haven't seen the film yet. I'm not that desperate for hits.) Kylo Ren is a self-made creature, a newborn child of the Dark Side. Raised, trapped, and fed implacably towards one destiny chosen for him by the manner and meaning of his birth, he found a horrifying, desperately craved-for freedom in another one.


**_Persona_**

 _Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute ~ Edgar Allan Poe_

. . .

He was the son of heroes and everyone treated him as one from the moment of his birth. Not that he was spoiled or fawned over, far from it. The General, his mother, that hovering indomitable spirit, was a more practical kind of royalty. The daughter of a lineage whose highest title was earned by the love of the people as much as it was a part of her bloodline. This was impressed upon him at an early age, that he must always fight to _earn_ that love. That nothing came for free. That every privilege of his life was born of a great responsibility to come.

That he was born into a debt he would have no choice but to someday repay. All for the price of his name. A name he hadn't even chosen, and the unwanted Force-sensitive dreams that made him sweat in the night.

"Ah," said the nurses when he was little and just learning to listen. "You must be so proud to be of the Skywalker family! They saved us all, you know. Brought back the Republic. You've got a wonderful future ahead of you!"

"Ah," said the X-Wing pilots that survived the Battle of Endor long before he was born, tweaking the nose of the wide-eyed little boy as he'd been scampering through holds and harbors for some privacy. "A Skywalker, an Organa, and a Solo all in one. You know, your uncle is still one of our very best pilots. You're going to do great things in the future, Ben!"

They expected so much of him. So much. When he was seven years old, he was dressed up in a plain linen tunic and sent down alone to the grassy fields beyond Mother's fortress where she tried to keep the New Republic together. He sat and waited for the first time he would meet his Jedi uncle since he was a baby. He waited, with pressure building so hard within his ears, pressure thumping in his heart, the raw terror of already almost a decade of expectations to come. What if he failed? What if he couldn't feel the Force beyond the haunting dreams that came whenever he shut his eyes? What if he couldn't pay what he owed, that cost he carried just for being born?

When he saw the brown hooded figure suddenly appear at the edge of the field, just at the fringe of the trees, he'd fainted dead away.

. . .

The mask was better. When he wore the mask, breathed through its crackling, harsh respirator, he was finally himself. The strangling confinement of its steel and leather contorted his features into something new. An identity he had chosen of his own will. Sometimes he took the mask off and traced a gloved finger across the silver lines around the eyes, feeling the cold metal through the leather. Pressed the heel of his thumb along the pits and crackles he'd already made along its once-smooth black surface. He felt better then. Not calm, never calm. Only better. He didn't want it smooth. He wanted it _broken_.

Sometimes then his head would lift and he'd catch a stray glimpse of that unwanted other self in the glass or the polished steel of the New Order ships he traveled in now, staying far away from who he'd been born as. That boy's cheeks with just enough roundness to them to be like _hers._ The nose and the remarkable chin that marked him as his father's. Still too young, too soft in the face even though he'd come to his full height and lived as a man alone now. Only the hair was tolerable, and he let it hang wild to his shoulders in defiance. Like the sacred ancestor, his grandfather. Not Anakin, of course. Anakin was the dead boy, the weakling who died along with all the other younglings as the Republic fell. Anakin didn't dare speak to him through the thrumming harmony of the Force. He left no whisper to trouble him.

Neither did Vader, to his great and secret shame. But why would he? He was not yet worthy of the greater secrets, the power of the Dark Side where Vader had been supreme. Snoke would let him know when that would be. Snoke, the giver and the breaker of chains. Snoke, who had taken the burdens of birth from him and taught him he could choose his own name.

. . .

The fire crackled and snapped once, sharply, stirring him awake. He shifted where he lay upon a small and folded robe, the sweet green smell of the trees filling his nose and he knew he was still close to home. His eyes fluttered open and he looked over towards the flickering light and the hooded shape that sat there. Half in the shadows, there he was. The great Jedi. His uncle. Luke. His own little boy's mouth went dry.

"You're not alone," said the Jedi Master. The eyes shifted away from the fire towards him and they looked heavy and already old. Something had died in Luke at the end of the war, some fire of his own had gone out. "You're strong in the force, like all of my family. But you don't have to be alone and you shouldn't feel you have to be. Loneliness is one of the places where fear hides. The Force binds all things, living and departed. So does family, Ben. Fear is natural, but you mustn't let it consume you. You're just one of the first now. There are other students you can be with. In togetherness, in the Light, we're stronger. We're never alone. It will help us bear the weight of being those first new Jedi."

Ben barely heard him, staring into the man's tired eyes. _So I'm not so special after all,_ he thought, and that was both a relief and the start of a tiny, buried fury. _I don't stand alone. So what am I?_

Luke's brow furrowed at him as if he'd heard the thought spoken aloud. "Being one of the first is still a heavy enough responsibility that I'm sorry to bring it to you." The mouth creaked into a wry smile of a man doing his best to understand the spirit of another. "I'm a stranger here myself. We're all going to do a lot of learning together. I think that's valuable enough as a first goal, learning. For the next generations to come. We have so much to build."

"How?" Ben croaked.

"There's temples all across the galaxy. Some are very old and contain the memories of countless old Jedi. We're going to travel to some of them once I talk to Leia. She's been prepared for this day, but it still would be nice to see her before we begin." He smiled. "After? You, and I, and then some of the other new padawans. We're going to see what we can learn. The Force needs us and we need it."

"To become strong?" Strong enough to carry a name he hadn't chosen. Strong enough to stiffen his shoulders.

The furrow again, like a whisper intruding from somewhere distant. Luke looked away, to the blue-touched horizon where the suns had gone down. "To find the balance, Ben. The Republic is newly regrowing, and so are we."

. . .

What he wasn't told then was that new growth after a fire is wild and chaotic; that the ground is not firm under the soft soles of a Jedi's linen-wrapped sandals. There was no order here, that he was left to toss amidst these unmapped seas. Meanwhile, each new temple had its voices and most of the padawans listened to them with awe and reverence, ready for the unknowable future Light threatened.

He just heard the noise, unending noise clamoring for his attention. He still felt alone. The meditations were difficult with their whispering, seeking his attention, the unceasing seduction of dead men and women wanting to give all the information they'd held in dead silence, waiting for Jedi to return so that they might once again be heard. They wanted to share, and they knew he was strong enough to hear them. It was to be his responsibility, of course.

At night, alone, using those first trained scraps of the Force to keep himself private and unheard, he scratched and clawed and beat at his ears as if to bodily pull the voices out. Anything for silence. Just for a moment's peace. They always came back, no matter how hard he ripped at himself.

They whispered his name, night after night, so many times it seemed like it was no longer his. Just a word, the thick steel label of a dead man. Another great hero's legacy he supposed he was meant to strive for. The first great sacrifice of the end of the Rebellion; old Ben Kenobi. The man who had made Vader, first out of misunderstanding, and then out of fire.

The chaos of Light was only noise to him and he struggled nightly against it. As they traveled, Luke tried to keep them from the places where the Sith had spread their corruption. He claimed there would be time enough to examine the other side of the balance, when they were better prepared to face its lure.

At night, close to some of these, Ben would slip out and stare across to the old ruins of their ancient enemy. The other side of the coin. They were there, too, filling the stone halls. But the old, dead Sith lords didn't deign to speak to the new blood. If they whispered, they kept it amongst themselves. They watched instead, the gimlet flicker of red and yellow eyes shining out from the shadows of all the damned places to regard him staring back. He found he liked that better. In the silence, he could map out the pieces of himself and wonder what he was truly supposed to be.

. . .

It was Snoke that taught him about order, about the value of imprisoning the tortured self only to prove worthy of bursting forth into earned freedom. Snoke's missives, whispering their way to him through hidden transmissions and scraps of journals that were pushed into his hands as they traveled. He understood all about confinement; his identity had never been his alone. Only a boundary that he had been taught by his kin that he could not break. That was the first gift the New Order's master had given him – the knowledge that it was a lie. That he had the opportunity, the choice, the chance to forge for himself a new name and title.

Kylo Ren. Meaningful and meaningless, and entirely his.

For that alone, he would have died for the supreme leader. The weight of that name was lighter and though he still beat at his ears at night to keep out those memories of a past whose debts he still owed, he felt as if he could fly.

The second gift was the mask. Not the one he wore, but the one he revered. For the cheap blood price of a handful of padawan bodies, Snoke had sent him a ship and a set of co-ordinates. _Take back what should be yours_ , spoke the lord, and so commanded, he had. He liked to kneel before it where it lay, holy and inert, on its pedestal in his quarters. The only thing he would not shatter at with his crackling first lightsaber, that powerful sword of fire he'd forged himself with a crystal he'd robbed from one of those dead Sith temples. He would still shatter at himself in those hours alone, contemplating the silent voice of the great Darth Vader while he smacked at his own skull inside its comforting, confining mask. Pain was a useful chain, so he was taught. Strangle himself with it and find more, raw power to harness and use. Even in extremity, pain was his to command. It drowned out the other voices with the rush of blood in his ears.

Not just dead Jedi, but Mother. And Father. And _Luke._ Luke, who must someday die, so that he could break free from those chains of Light at last. Luke, who must have understood this, for he ran from what dead Ben, newborn Ren had become. It didn't matter. As Snoke commanded, he would be found and destroyed. Made to pay for the chaos he'd tried to create. Made to pay for giving others so much _burden_.

Find the information, said Snoke. Find Luke. He would do more than that, as he stared through the ship's view towards desolate, worthless Jakku below. He would remake it _all,_ in blood and in pain, just as he was remaking himself.

In the reflection was his face and he reached up gloved hands to stroke it, touching the leather and the silvery steel. Feeling the bumps under his thumb, where the fabric clutched so tightly against his skin that he couldn't even feel his own sweat. This was his face now. The flesh underneath was the mask. It was the past, and it must remain dead for him to live.

His name was Kylo Ren.

His future would be his own, and he had chosen the destiny Vader started. Freely.

He wanted no burdens that ought belong to lesser dead men, and for that freedom, any price. Blood price, sacrifice, pain. He could give pain. He lived in that pain to save himself.

He smacked at his new face, hard. Once. Twice. Thrice. He felt the echo of his thudding hand inside his skull, and afterward, only the silence. Wonderful, cold silence. His voice rumbled forth, meant for himself. "I will fulfill our destiny. Our chosen destiny."

Behind him, Captain Phasma shifted at the dull sound of his muttering. He turned slightly to regard her, seeing her shine through the black eye of his face. "Send the troopers. Bring me the rebel."

"My lord."

 _My lord._

Yes. This was right.

He closed his eyes and nearly wept, content in the horror of himself.


End file.
